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Fractional magnetisation plateaus, in which the magnetisation is pinned at a fraction of its saturated value within a range of external magnetic field, are spectacular macroscopic manifestations of the collective quantum behaviours. One prominent example of the plateau phase is found in spin-1/2 triangular-lattice antiferromagnets featuring strong geometrical frustration, and is often interpreted as quantum-fluctuation-stabilised state in magnetic field via the "order-by-disorder" mechanism. Here, we observe an unprecedented 1/3 magnetisation plateau between 5.2 and 7.4 T at 2 K in a spin-1 antiferromagnet Na$_3$Ni$_2$BiO$_6$ with a honeycomb lattice, where conventionally no geometrical frustration is anticipated. By carrying out elastic neutron scattering measurements, we propose the spin structure of the plateau phase to be an unusual partial spin-flop ferrimagnetic order, transitioning from the zigzag antiferromagnetic order in zero field. Our theoretical calculations show that the plateau phase is stabilised by the bond-anisotropic Kitaev interaction. These results provide a new paradigm for the exploration of rich quantum phases in frustrated magnets and exotic Kitaev physics in high-spin systems., Comment: Submitted version, 10 pages, 5 figures. Final version has been published in Nature Physics

Topological magnons are bosonic analogues of topological fermions in electronic systems. They have been studied extensively by theory but rarely realized by experiment. Here, by performing inelastic neutron scattering measurements on single crystals of a two-dimensional ferromagnet CrBr$_3$, which was classified as Dirac magnon semimetal featured by the linear bands crossing at the Dirac points, we fully map out the magnetic excitation spectra, and reveal that there is an apparent gap of $\sim$3.5~meV between the acoustic and optical branches of the magnons at the K point. By collaborative efforts between experiment and theoretical calculations using a five-orbital Hubbard model obtained from first-principles calculations to derive the exchange parameters, we find that a Hamiltonian with Heisenberg exchange interactions, next-nearest-neighbor Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction, and single-ion anisotropy is more appropriate to describe the system. Calculations using the model show that the lower and upper magnon bands separated by the gap exhibit Chern numbers of $\pm1$. These results indicate that CrBr$_3$ is a topological magnon insulator, where the nontrivial gap is a result of the DM interaction., Comment: Version as published in PRB Letter, main text 7 pages, supplementary materials 6 pages